Thanks. I've seen them more than once, but they never get so close as these (there were more). This was obviously the leader of the pack, as he had the biggest horns. If you are wondering why they have horns this large: they can scratch their butt with them :-) Actually saw him doing that..

They just don't care. There's salt / minerals on the rocks near the hut, and they really crave that stuff. They lick it off and don't care if I'm taking a photo or not :-) I don't know if the hut warden sprinkles some extra salt on the rocks, or why else the rocks near the hut were that 'tasty' ... !

All of your photographs seem to be so sharp and such vivid color. I saw on a previous photo you said you got a new camera. What are the majority of your shots taken with? What digital camera or film? I am envious of your very nice work!

The majority of my shots is taken with a Canon Powershot G5, a very nice camera.
Unfortunately this was the one that 'died', it was replaced with a Canon Powershot Pro 1. I think all my photos from France and Switzerland are done with the G5, those from Italy with the Pro 1. For those easy daylight shots you probably won't notice the difference between the two. I just took all pictures on 'auto' because I didn't read the manual (something which I regret now).

But actually those camaras were my dad's, so when I went to New Zealand I bought myself a cheap 2nd hand Canon A400. This time, I did have to read the manual to get good photos. It's still amazing what you can do with a relatively simple camera, using the white balance, color schemes, histograms etc. If you're interested, there's a lot of photos from New Zealand on my homepage (link is on my profile page). I'm pretty happy with the results from my little cheap camera, the only real downside to it is that sometimes the pictures get quite 'grainy'.

But I'm also looking forward to taking the bigger camera's on my next trip, now that I know (a bit more) how to handle them!

So again, thanks for the kind words! And in conclusion, the best thing I ever did to improve my photos was reading the camera manual :-)

Thanks for the interest in my photos. I think the 'huttenwirt' sprinkles some salt on the rocks. The photo is taken right in front of the hut and its little terrace. Would be quite rude to pee here! The toilet is only a good 50m to the other side ... And I don't remember if it actually got this close, I think this shot is a little zoomed in, and the other ibex shot shows the situation without zoom.